The Most Underrated Skill in 2026

The most underrated skill in 2026? The ability to figure it out.

Technology hasn’t just given us access to information; it’s given us agency. In the early days of the tech boom, companies made a strategic pivot. Instead of providing a human customer support agent for every query, they built robust, self-serve help centers and blogs. While this was a business efficiency move, it had an unintended consequence: It gave the world a head start on learning how to be autonomous.

It’s about moving from "Who can show me?" to "I’ll find the way."

In a video that we’d play during one of the Grow with Google training sessions, a business owner jokes about earning her degree from the University of Google. When she had a new need to figure something out, she recognized she had the access to find the information right on Google. 

This highlights a significant shift in the accessibility of knowledge, but it requires a rewiring for those who would rather be told directions than find information themselves. The mission of opening up information has rewritten the baseline of what we expect from ourselves and our collective teams.

Today, core leadership is defined by:

• Proactivity: The ability to find a path when no map is provided.

• Critical Thinking: Sifting through endless data to find the "signal" in the noise.

• Problem-Solving: Moving from "I don't know" to "I will find out."

  
  

If Google taught us how to find information, Artificial Intelligence is teaching us how to apply it. We are moving beyond search results into the realm of real-time consultation. The barrier to entry for complex tasks, coding, data analysis, strategic planning, is no longer the data itself. The data is everywhere.

The real barrier now is mindset. 

Autonomy is a muscle. For those who have been "wired" to wait for directions, the AI era will feel daunting. But for those who embrace the proactive spirit of the "University of Google," AI represents the greatest productivity accelerator in history.